While I must grudingly agree that the Foundation has done and is doing Good Things, in my opinion it still ranks up there as one of the world's biggest money laundering schemes, second only to political parties and PACs.
"California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ex Vice-president Al Gore were in attendance at the event in the JPL facilities."
Schwarzenegger has the excuse of it being his state, but why was Gore present? IIRC, he wasn't exactly in favor of space exploration in the 2000 campaign. Is there going to be an upcoming press release about "better ways" the money could have been spent?
"The scammers then use the already documented bug in IE that allows a site in Pakistan to get 'www.fdic.gov' to appear in the URL bar. Where's an MS patch when we really need one?"
"In all seriousness what reason do we have to go to Mars?"
To get away from all the people that have to have the "why?" part explained to them. There's a fundamental difference between you and I and I'd be more comfortable not being on the same planet. This is not to say that you're a bad person per se, but I'd rather not have to compete with people who don't feel that calling. I don't want to have to justify myself and my feelings to people such as yourself.
Mod me as you will, but there is a degree of religion in this in the sense that this is more of the heart than of the head and as such really can't be explained in rational terms. A "manifest destiny" of sorts, where the reasons are only manifest only if you are able to and allow yourself to look at them instead of relying soley on rational debate. It would be easier to explain color to someone who can't (or won't) see.
There is no reason for "us" to go to Mars, but there is definately a reason for "me" to go to Mars. I personally am not in favor in requiring non-believers to help me and those who feel as I do get off this rock and am open to alternatives. But part of my desire to leave is the people who seem to require I justify myself and my desires before they decide whether they are "worthy."
Besides, do you really want to keep a loon like me around?:)
Could've fooled me. Just as with the CCNA, I got my CCNP cert without ever touching Cisco hardware. The "hard" parts, the router simulations, are probably the easiest parts of all the tests if you've ever been in front of a *nix CLI for more than five minutes (I mean, come on! They include the online help features!). And just as with the CCNA it's done jack and shit with my apparent employability.
I once hoped that, with my apparent lack of "real world" experience on my resume, collecting a few useless pieces of paper (one of which happens to say "CCNP") would at least get my foot in the door to some entry-level peon "Go kick the print server again" job. But I'm still working as a typist and I'm doubting that even pursuing a CCIE would be worth the extreme time and effort that my current employment just can't pay for.
For future reference for anybody who wants to see national bill/law in all its "glory," here are some notes of mine. Bear in mind that IANAL, but I've had need to look this kind of stuff up in recent years.
Always start with Thomas. Being the Library of Congress and all, it makes sense for them to maintain an up-to-date collection of all the legislation floating around on the floor. They keep track of bills from introduction until they die, are vetoed, or become law.
Make sure you have the right Congress. Even though it seems most members of Congress have been where they are for longer than many of us have been alive, a new "Congress" is considred to be formed the swearing in of the winners of a recent election. Our current Congress was sworn in after the last election, January '03. Since we know what we're looking for happened in '01, we have to go back to the 107th Congress.
Know what you're looking for. It sounds simple, but it isn't always. For example, if you're looking for a piece of pork-barrel spending slipped into a bill to complain about, good luck; they tend not to call bills "Act to Buy Votes in my Home District and Keep My Sorry Ass on the Hill" (Bitter? Who, me?). Luckily for us, we know the "proper" name of the bill ("USA PATRIOT Act"). You can also search by things like bill number (they begin with "HR" if they start in the House of Representatives and "S" if they start in the Senate), its status (check out the long list of bills President Bush has vetoed!) as well as other factors. In this example, we see that the USA PATRIOT Act was known as "HR 3162" in the 107th Congress
Make sure you have the right version. For better*cough* or for worse, the USA PATRIOT Act is one of those bills nobody bothered to look at before voting on, but that's a rarity. It's pretty common for the House and the Senate to dicker back and forth over the text before sending it off to the White House. (I hear the White House can even occasionally send it back for yet more revision, but I'm beginning to think that's just a myth.) Once you're looking at one version of the bill you're looking for, you can click on "Bill Summary & Status Info" for a breakdown of what the different versions are, where we ultimately learn that HR 3162 was signed into law as "public law 107-56" (107th Congress, 56th public law) and can view the text of the final version there.
Unfortunately, the response you get here doesn't have a URL you can easily cut-and-paste for others to look at, so I had to go to The Other Source on federal law: the GPO. It's their primary job to take all these silly laws numbered solely by Congress and law number and organize them into something that's more easily searched (relatively speaking), breaking it down into titles, chapters, sections and so forth. The USA PATRIOT Act doesn't exist in US Code as one monolithic chunk of text but as a whole mess of edits, addendums and footnotes sprinkled liberally throughout the whole thing (which is why you often want to start with Thomas even if it's already become a law). However, since they had to deal with the beast of "public law 107-56" in its original form before digesting it, and since they're in charge of all government publishing to begin with (what's in a name?), they should have the text available in its original form. Sure enough, go to their website, click on "Public and Private Laws," select the 107th Congress, type in "public law 107-56," and you get to see it in ASCII or PDF format with a (relatively) friendly URL. Now if only they can be convinced to use normal double quotes
"but realize that the energy needed to get it back to earth lessens its appeal"
Um... we're the densest chunk of anything in the star system and the biggest gravity sinkhole within 150E6 km. We're living on a great big bullseye. Ever wonder why the far side of the moon has many more craters than the near side? Better yet, ever wonder why we have this monsterous moon to begin with?
The "hard" part of the moon-to-earth journey is bleeding off the kinetic energy of the moon's orbit, but even that is insanely easy by earth standards. Blow the dust out of a WWII surplus 16" gun, send it up there, and you can have regolith coming back here at rates measured in tons per hour (if not per minute). Hey, if the SHARP project could use one to send payloads into space from earth...
Don't like the start-up cost of sending up something that heavy? Build one on-site instead. Harvest iron from asteroid impacts, smelt it with reflecting mirrors (what's the carbon content of your typical iron asteroid, anyway?) and fire it off using hydrogen obtained locally (where you don't have to worry about catching it before a crushing atmosphere squeezes it up out of reach). You end up with a light gas gun where you don't even need to worry about the speed of sound to begin with.
(Yeah yeah, you could probably use magnetic induction, etc, but you need an earth-shattering "kaboom!" even if you only get to hear it through your feet:) )
"Apparently no one knows how to build a nuke reactor safely enough for the insurance companies.
I have to wonder what type of design they want."
Exactly what we have. Being insurance companies, they like the high fear factor that lets them charge practically whatever price they name and they especially like never having to make a payout since nobody ever actually gets hurt by it. It's a win/win situation for them.
"It was US engineers who learned from German physists."
You're confusing fission with rocketry. Folks like Oppenheimer was Hungarian in origin and Fermi Italian. But that's all moot reguardless, since the only distinction we make between natural-born and naturalized citizens is the whole president/VP thing.
"Do you really want to know every time your wife fakes an orgasm? And trust me, if you're on Slashdot, she does."
Who the heck wears glasses in the middle of the act? I mean, seriously, if they don't get in the way, you're doing something wrong (which is probably why she's faking to begin with:) ).
"However, they can easily code sites such that you can't find out the real link destination until the flash movie completes and redirects the main browser there."
Once that happens and you have the true URL and/or IP, block their IP block at the firwall/router. Problem solved.
Slashdot Mirror
"NASA should set Opportunity on a course to make the 6600 mile trek and kick Spirit's ass for acting up."
No, because some idiot along the line will tell Opportunity to move 6600 kilometers instead.
" In Europe, there's nothing strange in being a knight and a robber at the same time"
Then she should at least bestow the honor on someone who did it creatively. Where's D. B. Cooper's knighthood?
While I must grudingly agree that the Foundation has done and is doing Good Things, in my opinion it still ranks up there as one of the world's biggest money laundering schemes, second only to political parties and PACs.
"Bill Gates has led one of the planets most profitable companies for over a decade. He deserves a Knighthood."
And Mussolini got the trains to run on time. What's your point?
Eh, whatever. She ain't my queen...
"California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ex Vice-president Al Gore were in attendance at the event in the JPL facilities."
Schwarzenegger has the excuse of it being his state, but why was Gore present? IIRC, he wasn't exactly in favor of space exploration in the 2000 campaign. Is there going to be an upcoming press release about "better ways" the money could have been spent?
And they should make a Kid Icarus 3 while they're at it.
"The scammers then use the already documented bug in IE that allows a site in Pakistan to get 'www.fdic.gov' to appear in the URL bar. Where's an MS patch when we really need one?"
Right here.
"Too bad Mars is too far from the next CO to qualify for DSL"
I guarantee you Mars will have DSL before I do.
"In all seriousness what reason do we have to go to Mars?"
:)
To get away from all the people that have to have the "why?" part explained to them. There's a fundamental difference between you and I and I'd be more comfortable not being on the same planet. This is not to say that you're a bad person per se, but I'd rather not have to compete with people who don't feel that calling. I don't want to have to justify myself and my feelings to people such as yourself.
Mod me as you will, but there is a degree of religion in this in the sense that this is more of the heart than of the head and as such really can't be explained in rational terms. A "manifest destiny" of sorts, where the reasons are only manifest only if you are able to and allow yourself to look at them instead of relying soley on rational debate. It would be easier to explain color to someone who can't (or won't) see.
There is no reason for "us" to go to Mars, but there is definately a reason for "me" to go to Mars. I personally am not in favor in requiring non-believers to help me and those who feel as I do get off this rock and am open to alternatives. But part of my desire to leave is the people who seem to require I justify myself and my desires before they decide whether they are "worthy."
Besides, do you really want to keep a loon like me around?
Then let's amend it: RIAA members are like PayPal.
Maybe later Spirit will be able to tell us whether Han or Greedo shot first!
"It's not the CCNP"
Could've fooled me. Just as with the CCNA, I got my CCNP cert without ever touching Cisco hardware. The "hard" parts, the router simulations, are probably the easiest parts of all the tests if you've ever been in front of a *nix CLI for more than five minutes (I mean, come on! They include the online help features!). And just as with the CCNA it's done jack and shit with my apparent employability.
I once hoped that, with my apparent lack of "real world" experience on my resume, collecting a few useless pieces of paper (one of which happens to say "CCNP") would at least get my foot in the door to some entry-level peon "Go kick the print server again" job. But I'm still working as a typist and I'm doubting that even pursuing a CCIE would be worth the extreme time and effort that my current employment just can't pay for.
This is the final version.
For future reference for anybody who wants to see national bill/law in all its "glory," here are some notes of mine. Bear in mind that IANAL, but I've had need to look this kind of stuff up in recent years.
Unfortunately, the response you get here doesn't have a URL you can easily cut-and-paste for others to look at, so I had to go to The Other Source on federal law: the GPO. It's their primary job to take all these silly laws numbered solely by Congress and law number and organize them into something that's more easily searched (relatively speaking), breaking it down into titles, chapters, sections and so forth. The USA PATRIOT Act doesn't exist in US Code as one monolithic chunk of text but as a whole mess of edits, addendums and footnotes sprinkled liberally throughout the whole thing (which is why you often want to start with Thomas even if it's already become a law). However, since they had to deal with the beast of "public law 107-56" in its original form before digesting it, and since they're in charge of all government publishing to begin with (what's in a name?), they should have the text available in its original form. Sure enough, go to their website, click on "Public and Private Laws," select the 107th Congress, type in "public law 107-56," and you get to see it in ASCII or PDF format with a (relatively) friendly URL. Now if only they can be convinced to use normal double quotes
"but realize that the energy needed to get it back to earth lessens its appeal"
:) )
Um... we're the densest chunk of anything in the star system and the biggest gravity sinkhole within 150E6 km. We're living on a great big bullseye. Ever wonder why the far side of the moon has many more craters than the near side? Better yet, ever wonder why we have this monsterous moon to begin with?
The "hard" part of the moon-to-earth journey is bleeding off the kinetic energy of the moon's orbit, but even that is insanely easy by earth standards. Blow the dust out of a WWII surplus 16" gun, send it up there, and you can have regolith coming back here at rates measured in tons per hour (if not per minute). Hey, if the SHARP project could use one to send payloads into space from earth...
Don't like the start-up cost of sending up something that heavy? Build one on-site instead. Harvest iron from asteroid impacts, smelt it with reflecting mirrors (what's the carbon content of your typical iron asteroid, anyway?) and fire it off using hydrogen obtained locally (where you don't have to worry about catching it before a crushing atmosphere squeezes it up out of reach). You end up with a light gas gun where you don't even need to worry about the speed of sound to begin with.
(Yeah yeah, you could probably use magnetic induction, etc, but you need an earth-shattering "kaboom!" even if you only get to hear it through your feet
"Apparently no one knows how to build a nuke reactor safely enough for the insurance companies.
I have to wonder what type of design they want."
Exactly what we have. Being insurance companies, they like the high fear factor that lets them charge practically whatever price they name and they especially like never having to make a payout since nobody ever actually gets hurt by it. It's a win/win situation for them.
"It was US engineers who learned from German physists."
You're confusing fission with rocketry. Folks like Oppenheimer was Hungarian in origin and Fermi Italian. But that's all moot reguardless, since the only distinction we make between natural-born and naturalized citizens is the whole president/VP thing.
" great now whats going to keep it floating up there???"
A boy with a funny green outfit and the ability to travel three days into the past, that's what!
Actually, considering John Paul II's stance on condoms and AIDS, I'm sure Darl's warped worldview would fit right in at the Vatican.
"Advertising should pay for the media it comes in through, not steal from it."
:)
Ehhh... I think that ones is a bit of a stretch. IANAL, but I think it's more akin to trespassing than actual theft, or perhaps vandalism.
Of course, I hear in some states you're allowed to shoot trespassers...
"This isnt an issue of "free speach", you shouldnt be free to spend other peoples money to market your product"
Unless, of course, you're a spammer or the product you're advertising is a political candidate.
"Do you really want to know every time your wife fakes an orgasm? And trust me, if you're on Slashdot, she does."
:) ).
Who the heck wears glasses in the middle of the act? I mean, seriously, if they don't get in the way, you're doing something wrong (which is probably why she's faking to begin with
I expect FPS games to implement the effects of lag on sniper fire at about the same time they include the effects of gravity and wind resistance.
"Moreover, most modern games don't get one aspect of scopes right - you can look AROUND the scope, to maintain situational awareness."
One scope, two eyes. You do the math.
"However, they can easily code sites such that you can't find out the real link destination until the flash movie completes and redirects the main browser there."
Once that happens and you have the true URL and/or IP, block their IP block at the firwall/router. Problem solved.
In Soviet Russia everything is red, comrade!